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Sunday, January 14, 2007

Welsh Rant

It occurs to me that I haven't really had a good rant about anything for a while, so here's one I prepared a while ago but never got around to posting, probably through fear and wondering if it's really funny to have a go at the Welsh nowadays.But what the hell, it's late, my mind is clouded with lack of sleep and excess of gin, here goes..........

Why don't the Welsh ever shut up about how great it is to be Welsh?

I saw the latest Welsh tourist board TV ad a while back.It's goes on and on about it being very difficult being in a foreign country with the signs in a foreign language. But the reveal at the end is that very kindly, just for us, they've put half the signs in English just for us.

Well isn't that nice of the little welsh people to help us out.

Of course there is another way to read the entire advert.It becomes clear when you consider that the English language part of the sign is THE TOP HALF, because that's the important bit that people actually read. The bottom Welsh bit is only really there for a laugh.

This is, after all, a nation that barely exists.Only something like 20% of it's population actually speak Welsh and I'd pretty much guarantee that 99% of Welsh speakers converse more in English than in Welsh during any given day.

I've always suspected that we actually offered the Welsh a choice at some point in our combined Histories:We offered them loads of money, regional development grants, masses of re-investment - the complete works.But the welsh turned round and said...... thanks very much, that's really nice, but what we really want is every sign in Welsh.

And bless us for the funny English people we are, because we agreed and spent the money on making all the roads out of Wales much faster than the ones leading into Wales.

This is part one in an ongoing feature called insulting the world one country at a time.Join me next time for the French.

*& yes, before anyone points it out I do realise that the position of the languages on the sign is up to individual Welsh counties, most of the Southern counties have English on top, the more nationalistic, cottage burning counties have the Welsh on top of English. But why let logic and reason get in the way of a gag?

** Also I should point out that this little bit of xenophobia is meant to be amusing and isn't intended to piss anyone off that much. I come from Birmingham for God's sake, what do I have to crow about?But just in case, could you address the flaming torches in English please.